With a low-price tag, a powerful Snapdragon 800 CPU, and a Full HD 4.96-inch display — there’s a lot to love about the Nexus 5. Of course, there are also going to be a few sacrifices when buying a handset that’s about half the price of a typical flagship.

According to most early reports, the Nexus 5 suffers from some of the same issues as the Nexus 4: namely weaker battery life and a camera that isn’t as good as other high-end Android devices. The good news is that some of the Nexus 5’s camera issues might have to do more with the stock camera app, and are not just shortcomings with the 8MP shooter.

Hoping to take the Nexus 5 camera experience to the next level, developer Jishnu Sur has now released a flashable .zip that replaces the stock camera with an app that has quite a few special features including faster focusing, the ability to record 720p @ 20Mb/S on the front cam, an adjusted focus range, and enhanced smooth zoom.

In order to get the new 3rd-party camera app up and running, you’ll need to have an unlocked bootloader with root access. You will also need to flash the file via some form of custom recovery. In other words, this mod isn’t for those who are unfamiliar with the Android modding scene. Then again, if you own a Nexus device, this probably isn’t a problem for you.

So how much better do things look with the new camera app? Most posters over at the XDA forum say that the camera is noticeably sharper in most types of shots, though the difference isn’t exactly night and day.

While we haven’t had the opportunity to test it out for ourselves, we have posted one side-by-side photo, originally from XDA forum member krazyAttack. The image on the left was taken with the stock camera app.

For those wishing to try out Sur’s camera app for themselves, you can learn more about the project by heading over to the XDA Developers forum.

Has anyone flashed this yet — if so, what do you think? Is there a noticeable difference based on your experience with it?